The present invention relates generally to simulated racing games, and more particularly to simulating race statistics and results for portions of a race or a full race or responsive to an interrupt condition during a simulated race.
Yellow Flags (cautions) are a major facet of racing sports such as NASCAR racing. There are a multitude of strategies and positional changes that result from a yellow flag caused by a wreck, spin, or other event. For example, a yellow flag provides an opportunity for cars to take pit stops, cars to bunch up, and lapped cars to catch up and become unlapped. In simulated racing games, such as NASCAR Thunder™ 2002, Yellow Flag options may be provided to enhance the reality of the game to conform with events as would take place in a real world race (e.g., a NASCAR-sanctioned race). However, in such simulated racing games, many people often refrain from activating a Yellow Flag enabling option due to the tedium of watching cars pace around the track slowly, e.g., 3 laps or more, during the cautionary period. It is therefore desirable to provide racing games that keep the strategy and gameplay associated with cautionary events such as would occur with activated Yellow Flag options, but which allow one to remove the perceived tedium previously associated with such game options.
Further, in current racing games, when participating in a scheduled season, or tuning, there is generally no way to progress through the schedule without entering and racing or quitting out of each race in the schedule. This can make tuning, or gameplay, a very time consuming process. It is therefore desirable to provide racing games that allow a user to simulate complete races or partial races, for example, to facilitate tuning and/or quick progression through a season mode.